Recently Resolved Service Interruptions and Maintainance

Network problem RU

As reported by the ISC, the RU was victim of a DDOS attack. As a consequence of this is the connection to the Internet was interrupted. Measures have been taken to prevent a similar attack having this result in the future.

Network problems FNWI

After the network maintenance of 20141111 a single user reported later a problem with the wired network. These problems intensified and grew faculty wide on 20141119 at 13:34 hours. The network switches in the Faculty of Science received so many topology changes of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) that network traffic often stuttered. By curbing the STP traffic on 20141120 at 15:32 the stuttering disappeared. We still search for the exact cause, probably it is a housing move.

Network maintenance in Mercator III south and low-rise buildings

The network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

DNS resolver problem

The server that acts within FNWI as first DNS resolver crashed, probably because of a disk becoming defective. This made the network slow or even virtually unusable for a lot of computers in FNWI. Only after a reboot of the server, the problem1 was solved. Monday morning, at the weekly reboot of this server, it would only boot after manually acknowledging the defective disk (problem2), When other servers rebooted at 06:30, a lot of them had problems due to the missing DNS resolver. Further measures to reduce the inconvenience of such a crash have been taken. The move to new DNS servers is in preparation.

Network maintenance in Mercator III north

The network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Network maintenance in server room Huygens

Because of a software upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be rebooted at 06:00h (AM) exactly. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Network maintenance in part of Huygens

Because of a software upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be rebooted at 06:00h (AM) exactly. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Because of a software upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be rebooted on Tuesday morning at 06:00h (AM) exactly. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Network maintenance in Huygens wing 7

Because of an upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

RU network problem

Begin : 20141029 09:38
End : 20141029 15:30
Affected : everything connected to the network within RU until 9:45, after that Eduroam users.

Due to a short DDOS-attack the RU was virtually disconnected from the Internet during ca 7 minutes. All network connected systems may have had problems during that time. Until 15:30 some Eduroam users still had problems acquiring an IP address.

FNWI network problem

The router that regulates all IP traffic between subnets in the Huygens building and surrounding buildings, became too busy. All network traffic, especially UDP had problems. ISC network admins reduced the load by simplifying the ACLs and reducing logging. At about 12:00 the problem was temporarily solved. C&CZ will do a further inspection of all ACLs, with the aim to reduce the load on the router without reducing security for connected systems.

DNS resolver problem

The server that acts within FNWI as first DNS resolver crashed. This made the network virtually unusable for a lot of computers in FNWI. Only after a reboot of the server, the problem was solved. Measures to reduce the inconvenience of such a crash and to make such a crash less likely, have been partly taken and are partly in preparation.

Disturbance of Vodafone VWO data traffic

Radboud University agreed on a new mobile telephone contract with - again - provider Vodafone. For this purpose, on Wednesday, September 24th during daytime the Radboud subscriptions will be adjusted. Employees with a Vodafone mobile wille have no disturbance in calling or being called that day. But the Vodafone data network might be temporarily unavailable. To restore the data connection it is necessary to turn the mobile phone off and then on again. Of course employees on campus can always use the eduroam Wi-Fi network.

M1.04 no network

While administering the network switchports for the move of ISIS to Mercator1 floor 0 to 3, ISC network management erroneously also changed the configuration of the network switchports of floor 4. When this was reported this morning, it could be readily remedied.

Failure cn56 disk

One of the mirrored disks failed. We didn't manage to rebuild the raid set with a new disk. The system is reinstalled with two new disks. After that, data from /scratch could be recovered from one of the old disks.

IMAP mail server problem

The IMAP server got overloaded again. Restarting the IMAP service was required to bring it back in operation. We think it is related to snapshots and therefore regularly remove invalid snapshots from now on.

Data/file/vol server (heap) problem

The server had a problem, which had started at the Monday morning reboot. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. Soon all data will be moved to a new server. This will not cause much problems for users, because everybody uses the aliases something-srv.science.ru.nl.

Maintenance wireless infrastructure May 19

At Monday May 19, a major upgrade of the wireless infrastructure and its maintenance tool (called Prime) will take place by the ISC. Therefore the wireless service (i.e. Eduroam) will be interrupted several times from 8:00 pm. Existing wireless connections will be lost and new connections will not be possible for some time. Due to the complexity of this operation this maintenance will possibly be continued at Monday, May 26, again with interruptions from 8:00 pm.

And yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Just like yesterday, a reboot of the machine was necessary to restore the functionality. Tomorrow morning, the server will restart with a new kernel. It this doesn't solve the problem, we will look into a new version of Samba.

Yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Just like yesterday, a reboot of the machine was necessary to restore the functionality. We will investigate if we can remediate this problem with newer software versions (Samba, Ubuntu, ...)

Eduroam problem

Begin : 20140506 13:40
End : 20140506 18:29
Affected : Eduroam users

Some Eduroam users didn't get an IP number, because one of the IP ranges had no free leases. This ranges contained all @science.ru.nl users. The ISC networking department first decreased the lease time. Now they also make this range free for use by @science.ru.nl users. This will prevent the problem from occuring again soon.

U-number authentication problem Eduroam

The new RU IdM system erroneously rewrote the RU password hash when data about a person changed. This primariliy affected employees of FNWI, because for this group the Science email address had been incorporated in IdM. This will make it possible to use the Science address as an external mail address when resetting RU passwords. When the problem was recognized, it was fixed swiftly by restoring the RU password hashes from backup.

Peage MFP Huygens building in maintenance April 28/29/30

April 28/29/30, the Peage MFP and the Peage POS near the restaurant in the Huygens building cannot be used.
The ISC will then investigate whether Peage can also be made available for employees instead of only for students. April 28, the MFP will be moved to the test location, April 30 it will be moved back.

U:/ home server pile problem

The server had a problem with one partition, which had started during the creation of new snapshots. We waited with the reboot untill after working hours. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. To prevent these problems in the future, we will no longer make local snapshots of homeservers, but of course the daily backups of the homeservers by the backup server will be continued.

And yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Just like four days ago, the server didn't react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. We plan to replace the server next Thursday 08:30-09:00 hours, in order to prevent further service interruptions.

Again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Just like two weeks ago, the server didn't react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. Together with the supplier we will try to find out what to replace to prevent this in the future.

U: / home server bundle problems

From the moment of yesterday's snapshots (13:00 hours), more and more processes were hung at the server. The first complaints arrived at C&CZ ca. 11:15 hours this morning. Therefore we decided ca. 11:35 to restart the server. The reboot resolved the problem. The number of snapshots will be reduced in order to try to prevent problems due to snapshots in the future.

Printer pr-hg-00-002 did not print from Windows/Mac

Begin : 20140402 11:32
End : 20140404 10:27
Getroffen : students of the Faculty of Science

Probably due to a too large printjob, the printer queue on the server (printto/printsmb/ooievaar) for the pr-hg-00-002 printer got stuck onWednesday morning. C&CZ was only informed of this problem at the end of Thursday. Friday morning this has been fixed by emptying the printqueue with old jobs.

U: / home server pile and Linux login server lilo/stitch problems

The server had a high load and stopped servicing users, probably because of problems with the creation of new snapshots at 13:00 hours. A reboot solved the problem.

Scan to email sometimes doesn't work for Konica Minolta MFPs

Begin : 2013???? ??:??
End : 20140226
Affected : Users of a KM MFP C364e as a scanner through e-mail

Update: we changed the configuration of the network switchports of the KM's, which resolves the problem. This was necessary, because the KM's do not try hard enough to make a connection with the SMTP-server.

Update: an alternative is scanning to a USB stick. Log in at the MFP with the scan-pin, put a document in the feeder or on the document glass, select Scan and then plug the USB stick into the USB port on the right side of the MFP , on the top side. After a few seconds the MFP recognizes the USB stick and presents the choice "Save a document to external memory". Choose OK and press Start. See also [RU http://www.ru.nl/publish/pages/687597/uitrol-mf-scan.pdf manual] on the RU-page about the MFP's.

Users report to us that the scanning to e-mail sometimes doesn't work, with an error like "Server not found. Scan deleted". The problem has been reported to KM. As far as we know, the problem occurs only seldom. It can temporarily be resolved by switching the machine off and on again.

BASS Java 7 problem

The ISC let us know that after the installation of patches installed in BASS during the weekend of December 1, the possibility to use a recent version of Java (version 7) had erroneously disappeared. As of February 11, 2014 this issue has been resolved. The function in BASS to work with all versions of Java SE (JRE) on the client (PC) has been reactivated. Furthermore all JAR-files in BASS have received a security certificate (they have been signed), with which it possible for BASS to work with the latest Java SE versions (Java SE 7.51 en hoger). BASS users who work with Forms, will see pop-up windows asking "Do you want to run this application?". Of this a description has been made on the RU Intranet.

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 5

On Monday evening, February 3rd between 19:00 - 24:00 (7:00 - 12:00 pm) maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens Wing 5. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments at all locations in this Wing, on all floors.

Again network interruptions in Huygens wing 2

The announced proceedings on Tuesday, January 21st on the network equipment unfortunately did not take place due to a sudden instability of the network in Wing 1 the same day. In order to prevent further instability issues in Wing 2, it was necessary to solve the problems in Wing 1 first. These problems have been identified and corrected.
The network maintenance in Wing 2 will now take place Tuesday, January 28th between 19:00 and 24:00 ( 7:00 pm to 12:00 ) during which the wireless and cabled networks will be off line for some time. This will affect all floors in Wing 2 and rooms along the corridors between wings 2 and 4 (all floors).

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 2

On Tuesday evening January 21 between 7:00 pm and 12:00 pm maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens wing 2. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments at all locations in wing 2 and corridors between wings 2 and 4, on all floors.

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 1

On Monday evening January 13 between 7:00 pm and 12:00 pm maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens wing 1. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments in many locations in wing 1 and corridors between wings 1 and 3, on all floors.

Network problems

Begin : 20140106 11:29
End : 20140106 11:40

Due to an error by an ISC network administrator, all internal and external RU network traffic was blocked for a short period.

In the course of these two days, above network shares will be moved to new servers. During the move action, a share will not be available. If you encounter any problems connecting to a network share using Windows, always connect using the "share-name minus srv" naming scheme: \\sharenaam-srv.science.ru.nl\sharenaam. See also Diskruimte#Naming.

Postponed replacement of home-server "bundle"

The replacement of the old home server "bundle" has been postponed and will now guaranteed take place on Monday morning December 23. Because the data have been synchronized with the new server, there will not be much downtime. The new server should be very dependable: hardware RAID-6, double processors and power supplies and a 5-year support contract from the supplier. The performance has improved, e.g. by using hardware RAID with a 1 GB write cache with battery backup.

Interruption of network in Huygens wing 1

Tuesday night December 17 19:00-24:00 hours, maintenance work will be done affecting the data network in Huygens wing 1. The wired and wireless network will suffer service interruptions a few times during that period. The main inconvenience will be on the ground floor.

Service interruption Konica Minolta MFP's outside of Huygens building

Begin : 20131209 12:48
End : 20131209 13:40 after reset of a KM MFP
Affected : Users of the KM MFP's outside of the Huygens building

C&CZ changed the DHCP-configuration of the KM MFP's, because KM had told us all KM's had an identical configuration after the upgrade of the night of December 4. Soon thereafter the KM's outside of the Huygens building showed problems. After changing the DHCP-configuration back to the previous version and restarting the MFP's, the problem was resolved. The firmware upgrade of these machines still has to take place.

Konica Minolta MFP's firmware upgrade

Wednesday night, the firmware of the Konica Minolta multifunctionals will be upgraded. This should resolve existing problems, like the not waking up from sleep mode. Please report all remaining problems, for MFP-hardware and paper to KM via phone: 55955 option 4.

Power dip December 3

Tuesday morning around half past nine, there was a short power dip for RU/UMCN, probably due to a switch error at Liander. This power dip, that is not listed on the power interruption website, made all systems restart that were not on UPS power. Because only the network switches in Huygens wing 1 and 7 are on UPS power, a lot of users lost their connection to the network, including wireless and IP-telephony, for about 20 minutes. Apparatus that restarted faster than the network, might have needed an extra restart to restore the connection to the network.

Again IMAP mail server problem

Just like 3 days ago, the IMAP server got overloaded after noon. It took a reboot to bring the service back in operation. We suspect that our making of a backup-snapshot triggers this and now have disabled the snapshot during working hours.

Yesterday afternoon around 14:30 the ISC conducted a seemingly innocent maintenance on the LDAP-server, but immediately after that auth-requests from Radius were no longer serviced. This made it impossible for wireless users to authenticate with their u/s/e number. Users in the realm @science.ru.nl were not affected by this.

Power dip October 22, ca. 11:00

Tuesday morning around 11 o'clock, there was a short power dip for RU/UMCN. This power dip, that is not listed on the power interruption website, made all systems restart that were not on emergency power. Because only the network switches in Huygens wing 1 and 7 are on emergency power, a lot of users lost their connection to the network, including wireless and IP-telephony, for about 5 minutes. Apparatus that restarted faster than the network, might have needed an extra restart to restore the connection to the network. A department reported that a departmental printer did not survive the power dip.

Again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Sound on Linux dual-boot PC's disabled

The availability of sound in Windows appeared to be depending on the state in which Linux had left it. Therefore the sound in Linux on dual boot PC's has been disabled, in order to have it available on Windows.

BASS RU problem

The central BASS RU environment has been updated last weekend.
Part of this upgrade was a change of the web address of the second logon screen, as announced on our BASS page.
This morning it became clear that access to the second logon screen via the Port Forwarder didn't work anymore.
Therefore the UCI rolled back the change of the second logon screen. This means that AFTER LOGGING ON TO THE PROXY at https://admin.ru.nl/
BASS is available again via https://bassruap01.uci.ru.nl:8010/OA_HTML/AppsLocalLogin.jsp

This problem will be finally resolved when the Port Forwarder will be stopped on October 1, 2013.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

And again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

And yet again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Yet again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

DNS nameserver problem

Begin : 20130617 04:30
End : 20130617 08:45
Affected : DNS clients

The DNS server on ns1.science.ru.nl didn't start after the reboot, due to a syntax error in one of the zone files. When this had been coreected, it started without problems.

Maintenance Wireless@RU

On Thursday June 6th from 10:00 pm the wireless networks ru-wlan and eduroam will be unavailable for at least 2 hours. All existing connections will be cut off. The wireless network Science however will not be effected and will be kept available.

OpenID server problem

During the renewal of the OpenID server a configuration error was made. When users reported problems logging in, we started searching for the origin of problem. When it was found, it could easily be corrected and the server could be restarted with the correct configuration.

Homeserver bundle failed reboot

The fileserver failed to reboot during the regular Monday morning shutdown schedule. It was possible to gain access to the system console only after having removed all power from the chassis. Snapshots were removed using the rescue reboot but rebooting the machine resulted in a faulty filesystem. We were able to boot the system after all filesystems had been checked offline. These actions resulted in a unusual long downtime.

Disk server stack offline

Disk server pile offline

Begin : 20130408 06:30
End : 20130408 08:15
Affected : Users of disk volumes on file server Pile (userhomes).
Problem : Pile: Did not shutdown properly during weekly reboot due to a kernel panic which was
Solution : Executed power-cycle of the system

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

Network problems due to installation of Matlab R2013a

Yesterday Matlab R2013a has been installed. Today at 13:00 hours many servers started to automatically copy this 5.4 GB to their local disc. Some parts of the network were overloaded by all these copying, which made accessing the network slow for many users. The distribution of this software will now be scheduled to happen over a longer period, primarily outside of working hours.

More IP-numbers for ru-wlan and Science (wireless)

Monday, March 4th 2013 at 18:00 hours, the number of IP numbers that is available in the FNWI buildings for ru-wlan and Science will be doubled. Because ru-wlan moves to a new range, users of ru-wlan will lose connectivity for at most 15 minutes.
There was already a plan to replace ru-wlan and Science within the FNWI buildings by the RU-wide Eduroam and ru-wlan, but the wireless network usage has grown so fast that we can not wait for this plan to be realized. Last week some wireless users at times could not even get an IP address, although the lease time had been brought down to 30 minutes. Therefore this temporary measure became necessary on such short notice.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

The last few days three Science users have supplied their Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam. This time they even used a fake copy of the horde Science webmail website. The big differences with the real horde Science webmail website are:

the URL is not within science.ru.nl

the connection is not a secure https connection, there is no lock

the username and password do not arrive at C&CZ servers, but in the hands of Internet criminals.

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

New Radius server for ru-wlan and eduroam (wireless)

On Monday, January 28th 2013 at 8:00 am, one of the servers that is being used by the wireless network of the RU, will be replaced. This replacement will affect you as a user of the wireless networks ru-wlan and eduroam:
There will appear a new certificate when connecting. You can just accept this, after which the connection should work. If this appears not to be the case, then it’s best that you remove your old Eduroam- respectively your old RU-WLAN settings first to activate the new connection .

Specifically for iPhone / iPad users:
We recommend that you first remove your old Eduroam- respectively your old RU-WLAN profile before activating the new connection without a profile. If that unexpectedly fails, please review the information on www.ru.nl/wireless for iPhone/iPads.
If necessary, you can also download a new profile from that site.

Homeserver bundle crashed

LDAP server vernieuwd

Date : 20121214
Affected : Users with a Fedora based desktop PC

Older Fedora desktop PC's may experience startup problems after an upgrade of one of our LDAP servers. A fix is available and has been applied. If you still encounter this problem, please contact C&CZ.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Horde webmail again appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because a naive user gave the Science password to phishers/spammers. After first stopping horde, early Friday morning we disabled the account of the naive user and restarted horde. Saturday morning it appeared that this short spam-outbreak had caused administrators of hotmail.com to add our mail server to their blacklist. Therefore we switched the IP-number of this mail server Saturday morning.

Services unavailable due to power and network outage

During the night of wednesday on thursday a power outage resulted in a network outage in the basement computing facilities.
The power was restored to the network equipment using a bypass thus circumventing the UPS at about 09:15.
Further checks implied that most servers had not become powerless so that most services became automatically available again.
Network drivers on "bundle" had to be restarted in order to get access to home directories for a large number of users.
Furthermore, several websites had to be restarted which made it possible for PC's to boot properly.
During the day, an unrelated issue with the RAID storage of "plus" has been fixed as well granting access to the following network shares:
sofie, ams*, molchem, mb*, encapson, milkun4, snn, neuropi, digicd. carta, ...
Since wireless devices were unable to acquire IP addresses, i.e. gain access to the network, a split-brain situation was diagnosed within the DHCP service which was resolved around 13:00.

Announced downtime: home server "pile" down for reboot

Next Friday morning, the home server "pile" will be rebooted. There are problems with the snapshots, which could make a reboot take more time. Therefore we schedule the reboot for early next Friday.

Peage top-up unit near Huygens restaurant in maintenance

In order to test new software, the Peage top-up unit near the Huygens restaurant was switched to maintenance mode.
This unit is not used often yet, therefore this wil not have caused problems. Students that wanted to top-up their Peage account, could do that only elsewhere on campus. See the http://www.ru.nl/peage Peage website], locations are the halls of the Erasmus, Spinoza and Library buildings.

Eduroam incoming doesn't work for iPhone/iPad/iPod

The UCI network management reports that at this moment the incoming version of Eduroam doesn't work for iPhone/iPad/iPod. A solution is being worked upon. Eduroam incoming means that one uses the wireless network of a remote institute, with authentication (login/password) being checked by RU or Science.

Horde webmail server down because of spam

Yesterday evening, horde webmail appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because a naive user gave the Science password to spammers. First we stopped horde. This morning we disabled the account of the naive user and restarted horde.

Next Tuesday morning, the home server "pile" will be replaced by a new, more powerful server. Because the data have been synchronized with the new server, there will not be much downtime. The new server should be very dependable: hardware RAID-6, double processors and power supplies and a 5-year support contract from the supplier. The performance has improved, e.g. by using hardware RAID with a 1 GB write cache with battery backup.

Partly announced downtime for mailman + horde webmail server

This morning, horde webmail appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because naive users gave their Science password to spammers. After we found out who the users were and had them change their password, we decide to also replace a defective cpu fan. Therefore also Mailman mailing lists will be down from 13:00 to 14:00 hours.

SMTP server blacklisted by MS Live Hotmail

This morning, users reported that mail from smtp.science.ru.nl to hotmail users was being bounced by hotmail. We have tried to let the hotmail administrators change this fast, but when this took too long, we changed the IP-number of our smtp-server.

Planned service interruption: file server with problems

A hardware failure of a boot disk of the fileserver stack was reported Friday morning June 22. We decided to repair this after working hours. Thus at approximately 17:00 the defective boot disk was removed from the machine and replaced by a spare one. Enabling the disk, making it bootable, restoring file systems and rebooting the machine (after removing all snapshots) took a lot of time. When this was resolved Friday evening, the NFS/SMB fileservice was not active on the mounted filesystems. It took a reboot Sunday evening to resolve all problems.

Tracelab server poly defective

Begin : 20120621 14:12
End : 20120621 17:15
Affected : Tracelab for users. For administrators also Prism&Deploy and the WDS-service

A hardware failure of the server poly was reported at 2012-06-21 14:12. After a restart of the machine, it stopped working again.
No more recoveries were attempted and an identical spare machine was outfitted with the disks from the defective server. Disks had to be synchronized before making the machine available again.

Planned Service: website-databases and maybe Linux clients

20 Apr 2012 17:00 - 17:15

A defective hard disc has been replaced in a server, but the server needs to be rebooted to ensure that this is reboot proof. The MySQL database of roughly 70 websites will therefore be down for a short time. Since this server also provides the Kerberos authentication for Linux clients, Linux clients might encounter service interruptions during a short period.

Windows server "plenty" with xpsoftware unavailable

Thursday July 7, around 13.00 hours the server "plenty" could not be reached. Because this server serves the "xpsoftware" share for the Managed Windows PC's, all these PC's had a problem. After the server was restarted and the disks had been checked, it was available again at 14:26.

Downtime Science servers: Sunday July 3, 09:00 - 12:00 hours

In order to improve the cooling of a server room, we plan to move three racks of Science servers a few meters on Sunday morning, July 3. We will have to switch off a lot of servers temporarily. Therefore several services will be unavailable some time starting July 3, 09:00 hours. We expect the downtime will last until 10:00 hours for servers with a lot of different users. The cn compute cluster will probably be fully operational again at 12:00 hours.

Network outage June 22, 10:55-11:30

This morning, in the network hub for Huygens South a UPS (battery power supply) went down, which made a set of network switches loose power. Because of this, users in Huygens wing 1 and spin-off companies lost their connection to the network. After bypassing the UPS, everything was up and running again at 11:30. We are still searching for the exact origin of this outage.

New SSH keys for new login servers

The LInux LOgin server lilo has been replaced. The name now points to the new machine lilo2, because that one is faster than the other login server lilo1. Therefore it is quite normal to accept once the new SSH-key.

Planned Service: Limited computer services

12 Feb 2011 7:00 - 11:00

A backup cooling system will be installed in our main computer room. Therefore the air conditioning system must be switched off, which means that most of the computer facilities in this room must be shut down. This includes the cluster nodes cn00 through cn53 and many of the web- and file- (network share) servers. It is advised to expect a very limited service level. We will try to keep all home directories and the mail system available. For detailed information about the impact please contact C&CZ.

Printer lp5

24 Jan 2011 - 11 Mar 2011

Printer lp5 has been moved to HG00.089. You can't use this printer at the moment, there's a problem with the power supply unit.

Fixed phone problem

7 Mrt 2011

You can't reach certain fixed phones at the university right now, mobile phones and Skype do work ok though.

Mailserver blacklisted

4 Feb 2011 9:00 - 12:00

One of our mail servers has been sending loads of spam after a successful phishing attack. Since then, our server has been blacklisted on several domains. Currently this affects the delivery of email to @hotmail and @live addresses.